The present invention relates to storage jackets for video tape cassettes, and more particularly to a device for use on such storage jackets for providing an indication of the status of material which may be recorded on the video tape cassette.
Since the advent of video tape cassette recorders, it has become common for owners of such recorders to have several video tape cassettes on which to record television programs as they are broadcast. Such recorded programs are stored for later viewing, for example, by members of a family who are unable to be present during the original broadcast of a program. Once all the interested members of a household have viewed a television program which is of no particular lasting value, the tape may again be used to record another program of some interest to the members of the household.
Video tape cassettes are commonly stored in cardboard boxes called jackets which are easily stored on a shelf in an upright position. Several of such cassettes, in their jackets, may be stored side by side as books are stored on a book shelf. It is a somewhat cumbersome process to check a tape contained in a jacket to determine whether it has available space for the recording of programs for later viewing of a person who is unable to be present during the original broadcast. Where one or more members of a household are routinely absent from the household during broadcast of a favorite television program, for example, it would be particularly desirable to be able to tell easily that a particular video tape can be used for recording of the favorite program without destroying a recording of a program which has not yet been viewed by all of the interested members of the houeshold. In the absence of a written label on the jacket containing a video tape cassette, it has previously been necessary to remove the cassette from the package, insert it into a video tape cassette player, and actually view a portion of the program to determine whether further material should be recorded on the video tape. It would be more convenient to have an easily useable status indicator located on the exterior of a video tape cassette jacket. However, no suitable indicator is known to be available for such a purpose, at least partly because of the small area available for the location of such an indicator on the back of a video tape cassette jacket, where it will be easily visible while the video tapes are stored side by side on a book shelf.
Preferably, a status indicating device should be able to display an indication of whether material on a video tape should be saved, whether it is ready to be viewed, or whether the tape is ready for additional material to be recorded thereon. Additionally, it would be useful to be able to indicate that a recording should be saved temporarily, or that the tape is ready for material to be recorded on the portion beyond the point at which the tape was stopped, but that rewinding of the tape is necessary before material already recorded on the tape could be viewed. Ideally, such a status indicating device could be attached easily to existing video tape cassette jackets or included in the construction of video tape cassette jackets.
While various indicating devices have been available in the past for different purposes, none of them is particularly well adapted for use as a status indicator on a video tape cassette jacket. For example, Caldwell U.S. Pat. No. 1,768,113 teaches an indicator which may be included in the construction of a file drawer. The Caldwell device, however, is adapted to display the volume of material contained within a drawer, and is not particularly well adapted for displaying several different types of status.
Yoshizawa U.S. Pat. No. 4,501,359 discloses a video tape cassette container having a window through which a lable located on the video tape cassette may be observed. The location of such a window and the corresponding label on a video tape cassette, however, do not make it possible to determine the status of the video tape cassette while it is stored among others on a book shelf.
Tomsyck et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,501,396 discloses a gauge for displaying the amount of time left on a video tape cassette, but such a gauge does not provide a ready indication of whether or not additional material should be recorded on the tape over material which is already recorded.
Eilers U.S. Pat. No. 1,018,816 discloses a page recording device including a set of overlapping rotatable discs and openings through which numbers imprinted on each of the discs may be used to display a page number, instead of using an ordinary book mark. The amount of space available on the back portion of a video tape cassette jacket, however, is not large enough to permit practical use of the Eilers book page recording device as a video tape cassette status indicating device.
What is desired, then, is an inexpensive, easily used, and simply constructed device for indicating the status of a video tape cassette store within a jacket, so that the status of the video tape cassette is easily ascertained without removing the jacket from its storage position among other video tape cassette jackets on a shelf.